The present invention relates to electronic price label (EPL) systems, and more specifically to a method for detecting and reporting failures in EPL systems.
EPL systems typically include a plurality of EPLs for each merchandise item in a store. EPLs typically display the price of corresponding merchandise items on store shelves and are typically attached to a rail along the leading edge of the shelves. A store may contain thousands of EPLs to display the prices of the merchandise items. The EPLs are coupled to a central server from where information about the EPLs is typically maintained in an EPL data file. Price information displayed by the EPLs is obtained from the PLU file.
Component failures in today's EPL systems are often diagnosed by service technicians. The technicians go to the sight of the failure and load and execute diagnostic software, which alerts the technicians of possible causes for the failures. The technicians must then order parts. This method of diagnosing EPL systems is time-consuming and costly. All price changes will have to be stopped during the down time.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for monitoring for EPL failures and for alerting service technicians of possible causes for the failures so that they can bring replacement parts with them to the sight to reduce recovery time and shorten down time.